Thursday, Apr. 21, 2011

Feisal Abdul Rauf

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, 63, has moderate, colloquial eloquence, still relatively rare among American Muslim religious leaders. That didn't stop the attacks on him and his wife Daisy Khan when they teamed with a developer to propose a community center near Ground Zero. They still hope to realize that vision, knowing it won't come without further attacks. At a Manhattan church in 2004, a woman asked Rauf to explain hateful Muslim rhetoric. He gently proposed a deal: "You take the best of our tradition as a start, and I'll take the best of Christianity ... From there we can build."

Tully is the rector of St. Bartholomew's Church in New York City